A typical facility configuration of a hot rolling line will be described. For a hot rolling line, a hot steel plate slab heated to a required temperature in a slab heating furnace is conveyed on the rolling line, sequentially rolled, and finally wound around a coiler to be a product coil.
From the slab to the product coil, various processing temperature processes such as heating, rolling, or cooling are performed on the rolling line. For the heating process, facilities such as a slab reheating furnace, a bar heater, and an edge heater are provided. For the rolling process, rolling machine facilities such as an edger mill, a roughing mill, and a finishing mill are provided. For the cooling process, water injection facilities such as a scale breaker, a descaler, and a laminar cooling facility are provided. Further, mechanical facilities such as a table roller, a coil box, a crop shear, and a down coiler associated with conveyance of a material to be rolled are provided.
These facilities mainly use electric power and fuel, and consume energy. The rolling machine, the down coiler, the table roller, the crop shear, or the like is driven by a motor, and the motor consumes power energy. Also, in the water injection facilities such as a scale breaker, a descaler, and a laminar cooling facility, a pump is used to supply high pressure water or a large amount of water, and a motor that drives the pump consumes power energy. As such, on the rolling line, various facilities consume energy, and required energy consumption changes depending on an operation condition of each facility.